How Will Your Life Be Defined?

What defines our life?  Is it what we accomplish or how we live it?  Is it or should it be a combination?  Is it fair that so often a life full of accomplishments can become defined by demons or addictions.  When I heard about the death of Whiney Houston this weekend, I felt sad.  Sad that such a talented woman wasted away and never appeared to be able to overcome her demons.  When she tried to stage a comeback, it was obvious to anyone listening that the drugs had taken their toll on her voice.  Her addiction to her ex-husband Bobbie Brown (she called him her drug) seemed to take her down a road that she didn't recover from.  The fact that she sold over 170 million records gets lost in the story.  That is sad.

When we die what will our life say about us?  Are we living the life we were meant to live?  Are we living a life with meaning?  I love what Switchfoot says in their song Dare You to Move,  "...Tension is here between who you are and who you could be, between how it is and how it could be."  I believe that when we are living the life God has called us to live there is an underlying peace beneath the chaos.  I also believe that we are all here for a reason and purpose.  That may sound simplistic, but I believe that many of us are living the lives we think we should and not the ones we truly desire.  

I like what Rick Warren wrote in The Purpose Driven Life:  What on Earth an I Here for?  “Time is your most precious gift because you only have a set amount of it. You can make more money, but you can't make more time. When you give someone your time, you are giving them a portion of your life that you'll never get back. Your time is your life. That is why the greatest gift you can give someone is your time."   I'll take this a step farther and ask, what are you spending your time on and do you like what you're seeing?  Six months ago, my answer was no.  I felt that my life was going in a direction that I wasn't proud of and my time was being stolen from my family for a job and money.  I found myself self-medicating to make the exhaustion and physical stress go away.  I wasn't the woman God made me and I wasn't the mother or wife I desired to be.  I kept asking God for clarity and let me say, he is very CLEAR when you ask this prayer.  That's why today I am in Christian radio.  I may be working harder then ever, but I know that this is where God has called me to be.  What is it for you?  What do you want your story to be?  "Are you who you want to be?" -- Switchfoot
xo
Melissa